Unrest
Yeng Pway Ngon
Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2012
ISBN: 9789810738020

In 1987, a middle-aged man and woman share a night of passion, returning to their respective spouses the next day. They will not see each other again, but each is profoundly shaken by the consummation of a relationship that began thirty years previously. We discover this couple first met in the 1950s when they were both student revolutionaries in Singapore, ardently striving to bring about a socialist paradise in Asia. How did they go from the high-minded ideals of Communism to empty marriages and sordid adultery? A study in the decline of idealism and the ultimate failure of the Communist project, Unrest is also a bittersweet love story that takes place across Singapore, Malaya, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.